Mughal Administration c12.s7: § 7. Education in Muslim India.
Mughal Administration c12.s7
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§ 7. Education in Muslim India.
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In Mughal India, as in mediæval Europe, education was a branch of religion, and the educational expenditure of the State was defrayed out of the Alms Fund and through the hands of the imperial Almoner (Sadar-us-sadur.) The vast non-Muslim population was outside the pale of State charity. We have a farman of the earlier part of Aurangzib’s reign which illustrates this arrangement. He instructs the diwan of Gujrat that every year
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making the word Ali a part of any newly-created noble's title. (M. A. 313.) In one letter he narrates with approval the story of how a Sunni murdered a Shia at Isfahan and escaped to safety! (I. O. L. 1344, f. 34b.) He orders that Persians newly arrived in India should not be posted to any of the ports on the West Coast. (Kalimat-Tay. 141 a.) Many instances of the bloody persecution of the Shias, on the charge of blasphemy (against the first three Khalifs), in Aurangzib’s reign are given in the Tarikh-i-Kashmiri Azami.
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teachers should be appointed at the cost of the State and stipends paid to the students according to the recommendation of the Sadar of the province and the attestation (*tasdiq*) under seal of the teacher. The money was to be paid out of the Public Treasury. The grant was very small, as we read of only three *maulavis* being appointed, one at Ahmadabad, one at Patan and a third at Surat, and only 45 students enjoying the subsistence allowance. [*Mirat-i-Ahmadi*, i. 258.]*
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The monasteries (*khankas*) when not endowed by private donors, received larger subsidies from the Government, and they were expected to play the part of the Cathedrals of Christendom in fostering theological learning and general education. The Delhi Government gave allowances to families of famous scholars (who taught pupils in their own houses) at Sarhind, Sialkot and some other towns. But these schools died out when the families ceased to produce learned men.
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We may conclude our remarks about learning in Mughal India, by referring to the allied subject of the Court poets. These were Persians born in Iran. By all the Emperors except the puritanical Aurangzib they were highly patronised and well rewarded for their odes. Such odes had to be written to order to celebrate victories, royal marriages, coronation, birth-day and other Court festivities, and to supply inscriptions (*kutaba*) for the Emperor’s favourite buildings or chair of State. One of these poets received a purse of Rs. 10,000 for a four-line epigram describing how a trained leopard struck down a wild buffalo before the Emperor Jahangir. [*Tazkira-i-Sarkhush.*]
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∗ Cf. In Morocco the Government expenditure on education was limited to allowances to some *ulama*. Nothing was done for public health,—a few hospitals were to be found in certain towns where a few miserable creatures lived in filth, receiving from the *hubus* and the charity of the public barely enough to prevent them from dying of hunger. [*Ency. Isl.* iii. 170.] Egypt had one grand college, Al Azhar.
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These poets, in the 17th century, were closely related by birth or marriage to the Court physicians, who were mostly Persians. A run-away physician of the Shah of Persia was sure of a cordial welcome at the Court of Delhi. [Abdul Hamid’s *Padishah-namah*, ii. 367--'8 ; *Alamgirnamah*, 45.]
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Even the ladies of these Persian families of poets and doctors were learned and accomplished persons and they were employed in the imperial harem to teach the princesses and to superintend the distribution of the Emperor’s alms to women. In the last capacity the officer was called *Sadar-un-nisa* or ‘Almoner for women’. The life of *Siti-un-nisa*, the friend of the Empress Mumtaz Mahal and governess to her daughters, gives us a charming picture of culture within the harem in the glorious times of Shah Jahan. [See my *Studies in Mughal India*, pp. 21-26.]